In Obsidan’s murder mystery Pentiment, don’t expect to know if you ID’d the right killer
Pentiment plays with the ambiguity of its murder investigation—and nothing’s stopping you from pinning the blame on somebody you dislike.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Pentiment knows exactly what it is. The June reveal trailer for Obsidian’s 16th century murder mystery declared itself “a narrative adventure most unexpected,” and it’s definitely not the kind of game we’d expect from a studio and director known for RPGs. But that’s also exciting: director Josh Sawyer is clearly jazzed to be making a smaller-than-usual game set in post-medieval Bavaria, full of period-authentic artwork and a protagonist a bit reminiscent of monk supersleuthBrother Cadfael.
Cadfael, though, always catches his killer—Pentiment doesn’t plan to give you that kind of certainty.
In a Q&A session ahead of this week’s Gamescom, where Pentiment is playable, Josh Sawyer and art director Hannah Kennedy gave an introduction to the game and talked about what to expect from its mystery. There will be branching dialogues and events based on your choices, but you’re not going to get a “good” or “bad” ending for identifying the true killer or blowing your investigation.
“One of the things we talked about early on is that there are a number of suspects for these murders, and it’s not very clear—you don’t have DNA evidence, you don’t even have anything resembling forensic science,” Sawyer said. “The justice system itself is pretty odd to a modern viewer. There’s a lot of ambiguity here and you’re put in a position where you have to pin the murder on somebody, and it’s never going to be clear if that’s really the person.”
“You have to either use your best judgment or pick the person that you want to see go, because the punishment for murder in this time period was pretty severe. We really want you to see the consequences play out over a long period of time.”
In other words: Don’t expect Pentiment to tell you whether you were right after you deliver a verdict, butdoexpect whoever you implicate to meet a grisly end. Frogware’s recentyoung, sexy Sherlock gamesimilarly let you get a mystery completely wrong and carry on nonetheless. Sawyer confirmed that who you accuse will have ripple effects in your town, but there’s a core story focused on your character that will play out regardless.
“We’re trying to do the classic thing where we interleave the choice and interactivity within a very strong storyline,” he said. “I thought it would be interesting to tell a story that’s a very personal story that’s about this guy, Andreas, and the community he lives in, within the historical context of the events happening around them.”
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Andreas is an artist at a fictional abbey and a town called Tassing, who ends up “caught up in a series of murders and scandals.” Pentiment is set over the course of 25 years, so you’re not going to be investigating a single murder. Sawyer didn’t specify the structure, but I’m guessing one murder (or scandal) per act, with five acts making up the whole story. A multi-act structure like that would be ideal for showing how your choices affect the abbey and town over time.
A few more things I learned about Pentiment:
Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites likeThe WirecutterandTestedbefore joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he’ll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.
When he’s not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it’s really becoming a problem), he’s probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).
The reigning Pope of 1-bit mystery games is back with a Halloween treat: a haunted house game you can play in your browser
Return of the Phantom, which is basically The Phantom of the Opera but with time travel, is free on GOG
I desperately hope Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Disco Elysium inspire more RPG devs to reject the traditional drip, drip, drip of DLC and expansions
